Human beings, hunter gatherers, were so limited by food that they resorted to widespread cannibalism.
And this cannibalism lead to epidemic level prion disease transmission.
So prehistoric humans either starved to death, or died of prion disease. Or they developed a resistance, and survived.

And we are all descendants of these survivors, who were prion disease resistant.

Remember that the temperature of a gas is a statistical measure of a lot of molecules; you can't point to a single molecule and say "that molecule has a temperature of 273 K". Within a gas, even one considered to have a uniform temperature, individual molecules vary considerably in energy over time. Some of them reach escape velocity.

Similarly, a pool of water does not need to reach the boiling point for some of it to evaporate.

Human beings, hunter gatherers, were so limited by food that they resorted to widespread cannibalism.
And this cannibalism lead to epidemic level prion disease transmission.
So prehistoric humans either starved to death, or died of prion disease. Or they developed a resistance, and survived.

And we are all descendants of these survivors, who were prion disease resistant.

Well, the non-resistant humans may not have starved to death, but our ancestors simply out-competed them. It doesn't take a large advantage for one group to wipe out another, over time.

No. It's not a question of morality. How can I harm people who don't even exist? That's absurd.

150 years ago, no petrochemicals were being burned. And our power today costs more now than it did to them.

What morality is there because someone can't burn petro chemicals 150 years from now. I'm not harming them by using up all the gas now.

They are not even born yet. And if a world without petrochemicals is so bad, perhaps they should not be born. They will have to make due with solar, wind, hydro, and atomic power. They will still have power as long as the Sun burns, it just won't be as cheap as petrols are to us.

That's like saying the Spanish were immoral to and harmed me 300 years ago because they grabbed up all the gold, and didn't leave any for me. They were immoral for what they did to living people, they were never immoral for what they did to me.

Besides you have no problem telling me not to use petrol, why dont you just tell them they shouldn't use it too?

The motivation for that kind of infanticide is obviously reproductive. I have seen video of Silverbacks smashing the infants of competing males against rocks and tree trunks, swinging them by their legs.

The cannibalism in your links is only secondary to the infanticide.
Not hunger or starvation.

"Our common ancestor was probably also a cannibal."

Your and chimpanzee's common ancestor.
Or your and my common ancestor?

You're harming the planet as a whole by releasing all that buried carbon.

Sure. We're at Peak Oil. We have burned half of it all, already. We just had the longest winter, and the largest amount of snowfall in California, and lastest snowfall in California in my memory(probably in recorded history). If we are warming the planet with carbon dioxide, its a good thing because we would be having blizzards right now if not. Highway 4 at Ebbets Pass was still closed July 4 because of snow, its usually open in May.

Just as pre-petroleum society was harming the planet by killing whales for fuel.

It harmed the whales, it didn't harm the planet.

You shouldn't use it, and future humans shouldn't use it.

At least we now agree that I don't actually have to save any for them. And there is no morality involved in not saving some for them, you think they shouldn't even use any.

It is both necessary for life and harmful. It's a question of quantity, like oxygen for you.

Ok, we both know that we have used up about half of the total planet's oil reserve, and burned it already. Leaving half remaining, which is going to start getting really hard to get to. That means that half the total amount of CO2 has already been released as waste. At worst, we are going to double the amount of CO2. And its going to take a very long time to get to that second half, because its going to get much harder to get to, so a longer time than what we have used up burning the first half of the total(agreed).

What does your model say when CO2, not total just what we release, is going to be double?

Hydrogen is very light

I will worry about that in 3 billion years, ok? I don't think it is a reasonable problem in the foreseeable future.

But unless you're planning on dying very soon, it's going to affect you too.

Some time between a year from now and 20 years from now. I sure hope I don't make it 30 more.

Last edited by Fyyr on Thu Aug 04, 2011 4:56 am, edited 3 times in total.